The date 15 September 2008 will go down in history as the first International Day of Democracy. Addressing a special session of the Hellenic Parliament, IPU President Pier Ferdinando Casini underlined that this Day, which was proclaimed by the United Nations General Assembly in late 2007, "is neither a historical nor an abstract celebration. In many countries of the world, parliamentary democracy is either threatened or still in its early stages. Even those countries that can boast of a tradition of secular democracy must, day after day, reaffirm this commitment in order to be true to the classic definition of democracy".
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Parliaments around the world used the International Day as an opportunity to stimulate discussion of the challenges and benefits of democracy. To date, 43 parliaments have informed IPU of the activities they carried out or intended to carry out to mark the Day. Parliamentary events were very varied, ranging from the adoption of a resolution marking the Day in Uruguay; television and radio debates in Namibia; a special session of the Serbian Parliament in the presence of the President and Prime Minister; to an “open day” in Indonesia - just some of the ways in which the International Day was used to bring the public, and particularly young people, into closer contact with parliament.
Meanwhile, a panel discussion organized at IPU Headquarters on 15 September 2008 focused on current challenges to democracy. The guest speakers - Mr. Danilo Türk, the President of the Republic of Slovenia; Ms. Marta Lagos, Executive Director of the LatinoBarómetro polling organization (Chile); and Prof. Benjamin Barber, a US-based political analyst and writer - shared their thoughtful and often provocative analyses with an audience of ambassadors, students and journalists. The event was webcast live, and can still be viewed on the IPU website.
As IPU Secretary General Anders B. Johnsson noted, “in our increasingly fragmented yet interdependent world many processes and decisions directly affecting peoples’ lives escape normal democratic checks and balances. Globalization and international cooperation involves decision-making that lacks democratic control. And even at the level of the sovereign nation State where not so long ago all important decisions were taken, the central institution of democracy - parliament - faces a crisis of legitimacy in many countries”.
Around 25 per cent of the world’s parliaments chose to mark the International Day in 2008. A key challenge for the IPU will be to sustain and deepen parliamentary participation in the International Day in the future. Another challenge, for the international community at large, will be to engage the many other actors in the democratic process – the executive and the administration; civil society; political parties; and, importantly, the media – to ensure the widest possible dissemination of the International Day, and of the values and principles it stands for, among the citizens of the world.
A special section of the IPU website is devoted to the International Day of Democracy.
